


man; monster; king

by sepulchralsymphonies



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Beholding Avatar Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Established Relationship, F/F, Gen, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, More characters and tags to be added as the story progresses!, Slaughter Avatar Martin Blackwood, descriptions of blood and death and gore, martin is the hottest mfer you ever did see, what if jon and martin never gave a fuck about anyone but the other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26558407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepulchralsymphonies/pseuds/sepulchralsymphonies
Summary: What man, monster, king will step between them; what being of flesh and blood and bone and limb willdareseparate them?Let them come, Martin thinks, fierce and unforgiving and smiling.Let them try; I can wait.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	man; monster; king

Where Martin walks, the earth shivers beneath his feet.

The roads of the little village run themselves ragged as they loop and twist and turn with a mind of their own, splitting this way and clamming that way, forking into two in the distance and opening into strange new courtyards just ahead, curving away restlessly a street over and lazily meandering along into the packed dirt track that leads to the forest twenty paces behind him. Wretched little buggers, the lot of them— it’s not hard to imagine the act of navigation, for all intents and purposes, uncannily similar to the dance of trying to wrangle a leash onto a serpent. You can twist whatever knots you like, you can wrench the ends to opposite sides until you feel bones shift and creak and _thrum_ with a low warning, you can wrestle with your ropes until you sweat and bleed and curse and howl, but they’re always going to slither free. There’s no holding them back, not now, not ever.

But Martin’s not a stranger to these roads, and as he makes his way over the constantly shifting rough graze of stone and the sliding dampness of arable mud, they sing sweetly in welcome and part before him like they’re being ripped apart, thrashing and writhing and _hissing_ with their tails bound to the roots of a tree that looms over them above, one they see in their nightmares, one which glows late into the sweeping darkness and looks like it’s been strung over and through with a million twinkling fireflies.

Martin would know. He sees the tree every time he shuts his eyes.

People know not to wander the streets at night. There’s not a single person in the village who hasn’t heard tales of the monster who prowls the tumbling maze of their humble dwellings in the cover of the dark; there’s not a single person who hasn’t heard the laboured panting of a tongue that lolls out a maw filled with a thousand teeth, so sharp and perfectly honed for ripping out throats that you could bleed if you looked at it too long.

There are no stragglers in their little village here, no curious passers-by or exhilarated _we-had-a-son_ s or drunken _he-got-left-behind_ s in this gentle abode. Here, the people swear by their god and pray by their book and listen to what the soothsayer says, because they’re a sensible lot. They’re quiet and patient, _oh_ so dreadfully patient; they use their ears and not their minds, they employ their tongues but not their wits, they follow their hearts but not their guts. Here, the people kneel in supplication without knowing when their limbs have started to ache and press their foreheads to the ground without feeling the line of blood dripping down to their chins, and really, could they have ever asked for more?

Martin continues to walk on the well-beaten path with a thoughtless cadence, mindlessly putting one foot ahead and then the next, one-two, one-two, one-two. He doesn’t sway on his feet or totter for balance; he doesn’t need to. His heart is _pounding_ in his chest, a great once-slumbering beast that’s striding and raging and flying in leaps and bounds over hundreds of miles, claws digging into his chest with every shifting adjustment of silver sinews and eyeless sockets; breathing, chasing, _hunting_. His blood is searing hot in his veins, so bright that if he holds up his forearms to the moonlight, Martin thinks he’ll see his flesh bubbling away like broth in a copper pot, flames licking and tasting away at his veins with cloven tongues and searching fingers. The axe doesn’t slip from his grasp as it drags along the stone, the jarring friction of its blade screeching along the rough hewn surface music to his boiling ears. Absently, he wonders if Jon would sing to him, if he asked.

Blank-eyed statues stare at him as Martin crosses through a cramped little piazza, their stone-washed eyes seeming to roll in their sockets as they track his leisurely gait across the eerily beautiful circle of their eternal home. Cavernous archways painted over with moss and woven through with thick dangling curtains of vines leer sultrily at him as he goes, calling to him with siren song and whispers of immortality, promises of power and threats of ending all he’s ever loved; Martin doesn’t even bother to turn his head. There’s a strange sculpture rising out of the cracked basin of the fountain in the centre of the piazza; it’s a woman, her stance speaking of a moment captured between kneeling and rising to her feet, the folds of her robes gathered fluid and graceful around her hunched form. Her face is rapturous, tilted to one side as if listening to a distant melody, her mouth half-open with the saccharine taste of the song slipping down her gullet and into the vacant cavity of her stone chest, there to beat and resonate forever and then some more. The grating rasp of the blade echoes in the abandoned courtyard long after he’s gone, the wail of the now shattering the sacred silence of the then.

This far away, it’s hard to tell if the trees that rise over the low tops of the houses lining the streets are swaying in the cool bite of the autumn wind or being bent to the point of snapping in half by a massive invisible hand breaking down from the skies. Their branches extend, spindle-like, needle-like, looking for all the world like talons dipped in inky poison, clawing their way after the fleeing hordes of victims that thunder down alleys on stumbling feet that narrow and narrow and narrow some more, until all that’s left are fingers sticking out of stacked stone walls and a stray lock of hair absently drifting in the wind. Martin smiles at the trees as he walks by, and their crooked boughs wave at him as he leaves.

The moon rests high on her throne, bathing the malevolent roads of their village in a wash of molten silver. The moonbeams skip and stumble over the erratic bumps in the otherwise smooth flagged stone of the streets, worn down and glazed to a grey sheen by man and beast and wheel alike. The houses are mostly silent as he moves past them, all squeezed tightly together like they’re bolstered against an unknown threat, wall to wall, garden to garden, elbow to elbow, the stone and rust-red tiles of one bleeding lazily into the other’s waiting embrace. The occasional lamplight flickers through open windows, the shutters knocking slyly into the bordering railing with dull thuds. A crow caws loudly at him from its perch atop moon-bleached shingles when his blade snags against a bump on the road; Martin wrenches it free and moves on.

There’s golden light spilling out of the open door when Martin comes into view of their house at the end of the street, coolly ignoring one last ditch attempt by the village to lure him into an alleyway where the shadow of a man asks him for a match in a calloused, thirsty voice. He doesn’t even spare him a second glance, merely strides ahead the rest of the way until he’s lightly jogging up the first few steps and hefting the axe over the threshold. The smell of burning cedar assaults him the moment he inhales deeply, and the lingering taste of ash and myrrh in the back of his throat is forgotten in favour of the comfort of being home. The door swings shut with one pointed kick to the frame, and Martin turns around to look.

Jon is waiting for him. Of course he is.

“You should keep the door shut when I’m not home,” Martin tells him, leaning the shaft of the massive axe against the wall. It’s a truly vicious looking thing; it stops just below his shoulder when he’s placed the butt against the ground, and the wicked edge of the blade seems to glow in the languid sway of the candles atop the cabinet. Martin’s hand comes away red when he lets go of the hilt. The colour matches the splatters over his chest plate.

Jon’s face morphs into a frown. “I can protect myself,” he says, holding out his hand. His eyes rove over the axe greedily, taking in every little detail, and Martin is suddenly irrationally glad he thought of bringing it back for him. There’s not much in the world he wouldn’t do to see that look in Jon’s eyes.

“I know you can,” Martin says, reaching up to his throat to swiftly undo the knot of his cloak. The fabric falls apart fluidly; Martin snags out a hand and drapes it over Jon’s proffered forearm. “But it’s not about protection.”

Jon doesn’t bother to deign that with a response. His smile lights up his entire face when he looks Martin up and down, top to bottom, those cruelly searching eyes shredding him apart right there on the cool stone of their little home; _one-two, one-two, one-two_ , sings Martin’s heart. “That’s not your blood,” Jon speaks around the giddy joy that’s etched into the smooth planes of his face; it isn’t a question. With Jon, it almost never is.

“No,” Martin agrees, and takes a step forward. His heart feels like it’s swelled until it’s a bulbous, thrumming behemoth of his self, and Jon is stood watching with a golden needle in his slender hands. “No, it isn’t.”

Jon’s eyes never once stray from Martin’s as he moves closer, one achingly slow step after another till the distance between them is almost gone; _almost_ , but for a hair’s breadth, and there they stay, teetering over the edge of that bottomless abyss. He tosses the cloak over the back of a chair and puts his hands flat over Martin’s chest. _One-two, one-two, one-two_ , his heart trills away. “You smell of smoke,” Jon whispers, shifting closer. “Smoke, and flame.”

Martin thinks of how devastatingly beautiful Jon would look in the plain white shirt he wears now, with two blood soaked handprints framing his sides for now and ever. He places his palms flat against his waist and presses hard enough for the red to set in. Jon smiles serenely at him, like he knows exactly what he’s thinking, and presses even closer.

“You know how it goes,” Martin exhales, revelling in the freezing ice that are Jon’s hands settled over his chest; he finds the frigid aridity pleasing, even as it tears through muscle and bone to drape thick and unyielding over his heart. He doesn’t mind; it is Jon’s to do as he will.

Jon’s face twists. “He’s a loose end,” he scowls, sullen and demanding and petulant all at once, and slides his hands up to loop them around Martin’s neck. “I keep telling you that. When will you listen?”

“He’s still serving his purpose, isn’t he?” Martin asks him gently, ducking his head to press his lips to the crown of Jon’s head. Jon folds into him, limp as a marionette with its strings severed in a single swipe of the blade, and Martin brings up his arms to encircle the narrow curve of his waist. His shoulders are so fragile, bird-boned, thin and artful and nothing less than the stroke of a painter’s brush, nothing more than all the beauty and strength and cunning the world could ever hope to possess, all here, in this man’s being. If Martin still believed in a god, he would be kneeling in prayer with gratitude sliding hot and molten down his lips, singing hymns of plenty until his throat shattered and slid down his gullet. “I need someone to watch my back if I get into a tough spot.”

Jon snorts; the sound is muffled against Martin’s chest. “You’ve never needed anyone to watch your back.”

“Wrong,” Martin says. “I’ve always needed you.”

There’s an amused grin hinting at the seams of his mouth when Jon pulls back far enough to see his face, his hand sliding up the back of Martin’s head until he’s absently carding his fingers through the sweat-damp curls of his hair. “You didn’t bring me back a souvenir,” he comments, mild and inquisitive, and Martin can’t help but laugh fondly at him, at the subtle accusation in his tone.

“I wasn’t about to go digging through the ashes to see if I could fetch you a pretty trinket. I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with that.” Jon looks hungry as he shifts in place to stare at the axe propped up against the wall; the silver threaded through his hair seems to catch fire in the candlelight, making it look like he’s dragged down the stars and woven them into otherworldly braids. Martin feels like he’s gazing upon a hallowed ground, where the land stretches and swells and runs and leaps, where the moon rains blessings of blood upon them, and there’s never any end in sight. “Do you like it?”

Jon blinks at the sound of his voice, like he’s been roughly dragged out of a particularly delicious dream. His gaze is warmer, softer, more melted when he looks at Martin. “I love it,” he assures him softly. “It’ll look beautiful on the shelf.”

Jon’s pulse flutters when Martin curves his hand around the side of his jaw, high and scampering, rabbit-fast and doe-graceful, like his blood is sizzling inside of his veins to seep and spray and paint Martin’s hands with his own shade of red, like that’s a brand Jon would tear his own heart to pieces to leave upon him. The thought makes him feel giddy, inebriated.

“Jon,” Martin breathes quietly.

Jon’s smile is _blinding_. He moves closer. “Martin,” he whispers back.

When does their luck run out, Martin often wonders. When does it all end, this heady bliss of giving yourself over, completely, wholly, _absolutely_ , heart and body and soul, to one you’d torch yourself a hundred times over trying to save? When will the novelty of it all wear off; when will Jon stop stealing the breath from his lungs and the steady thud of his poor, poor heart with his clever fingers? What grave will be potent enough to hold them down; what earth will have strength enough to earn their wrath in life and in death? What man, monster, king will step between them; what being of flesh and blood and bone and limb will _dare_ separate them?

_Let them come_ , Martin thinks, fierce and unforgiving and smiling. _Let them try; I can wait_.

Jon’s grin is feral, waifish, whip-like in its biting edges. His eyes, those haunting, maddening, bewitching eyes look right at him, and Martin feels seen; he feels _whole_. “Welcome home, love,” he says, and his smile is made of ichor.

Jon’s lips taste of blood, and his teeth cut into skin like splintered edges of animal bones, torn from the bleeding limbs of a cursing, wheezing beast kicking out weakening legs and slipping on the hungry, hungry earth. It’s a feast fit for kings and queens and knights alike. Martin runs his tongue over Jon’s smile and dips down to drink his nightmares.

**Author's Note:**

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